Keeping the momentum
Typically, any new government or business leader is given 100 days to get acquainted with the situation, develop and present a strategy. As of today, I have been in office as CEO of Opel / Vauxhall for only 90 days, and we're formally announcing our plan for the future of this company.
During these past 90 days, we've been incredibly busy developing a first draft of our viability plan-presenting it to our employee represent atives,having a series of discussions with them, talking to government officials, and continuously refining and adjusting it to an ever-changing busines senvironment.
So I am happy to report that our external assessors have given independent confirmation that our plan is sound. With that positive judgment, we have nowformally applied to the German government for loans or loan guarantees.
This allows us to keep up the momentum, which is why I decided to present today our plan for the future of Opel/Vauxhall. Naturally, there has been a lot of speculation about what the plan entails. I felt that we needed to present it now so that discussions can continue on a factual basis.
The goal of the five-year, E11 billion plan is to secure long-term sustainable profitability through a growth initiative that will introduce new products aswe renew existing carlines, place extra emphasis on becoming a leader in alternative propulsions and explore possible expansion into growth markets.
Unfortunately, we'll also have to take some tough decisions as we adjust our capacity to current and forecasted industry volumes in order to lower ourbreak-even point. Along with that comes a planned reduction of jobs.
The plan is much too comprehensive to explain in a simple blog post, so if you're interested in the details, I encourage you to look at it at http://media.opel.com.
But the real work–the hard part–is not in creating a plan, but in implementing it. It is a challenge I am positive we can meet. We have highly skilled people working for us. I know the power of the people at Opel and Vauxhall and knowing this power makes me confident we can make it. Ultimately, this is aninvestment in a successful future of our company and our people.
We've only just begun.
